LLS
Nearly $43 million settlement proposed over FEMA trailers
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 5:30 AM EDT, Thu May 31, 2012
(CNN) — Companies that made and set up trailers used as emergency housing after Hurricane Katrina have agreed to a nearly $43 million settlement with people who say they were hurt by formaldehyde in the units.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/30/justice/fema-trailer-settlement/index.html
FEMA gives away $85 million of supplies for Katrina victims
FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.
The material, from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.
James McIntyre, FEMA’s acting press secretary, said that FEMA was spending more than $1 million a year to store the material and that another agency wanted the warehouses torn down, so “we needed to vacate them.”
Rarely had the failure of the federal government been so apparent and so acute. On August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew leveled a 50-mile swath across southern Florida, leaving nearly 200,000 residents homeless and 1.3 million without electricity. Food, clean water, shelter, and medical assistance were scarce. Yet, for the first three days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is responsible for coordinating federal disaster relief, was nowhere to be found. And when FEMA did finally arrive, its incompetence further delayed relief efforts. Food and water distribution centers couldn’t meet the overwhelming need; lines literally stretched for miles. Mobile hospitals arrived late. In everything it did, FEMA appeared to live up to the description once given to it by South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings: “the sorriest bunch of bureaucratic jackasses I’ve ever known.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0509.franklin.html